We go through an accelerated lifespan with the musicians that we love. The two or three years between albums can feel like a decade, and each concert stop in our hometown means we may go years before seeing them again. When a musician like LeRoi Moore, a founding member and the essential saxophone component of Dave Matthews Band, dies unexpectedly during what could be described as the very large, very successful prime of DMB’s young life—barely out of the band’s teenagerhood!—our reaction is existential: When you’re one of the most popular bands in the world, what does the afterlife look like?
For some, it’s more immediate than others. Both Nirvana and Joy Division cultivated band images around frontmen Kurt Cobain and Ian Curtis, respectively; after their deaths, Nirvana split and the other dudes formed New Order. Roi wasn’t a Morrison or Hendrix, but like all of the artists mentioned so far, his death alters the chemical make-up of DMB as well as how many fans experience the group emotionally, and many bands don’t move beyond that type of loss.
 Mourning one sweet world: LeRoi Moore’s (second from right) death also marks the end of Dave Matthews Band’s original lineup, a blow that many bands don’t recover from. |
But that’s not always the case. Metallica bassist Cliff Burton was crushed by the band’s tour bus during a 1986 accident, yet the band’s performances still honor material from Burton’s tenure. The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ lifeline has been long not in spite of original guitarist Hillel Slovak (heroin overdose, 1988), but because of it: RHCP stopped working with current guitarist John Frusciante when his drug troubles began, but welcomed him clean and sober back to the band. The original drummer for The Who, Keith Moon, died in the same London flat as Cass Elliot of The Mamas and The Papas; unlike Elliot’s group, The Who perform to this day, albeit infrequently.
Of course, carrying on a band after a member’s death can seem a bit gauche, depending on how its handled. Both INXS and TLC conducted searches through reality TV programs to replace Michael Hutchence (autoerotic asphyxiation, 1997) and Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes (car accident in Honduras, 2002), with mixed results: INXS still records and tours with their singer, while Lopes’ replacement was only selected for a single concert, and the two remaining members haven’t released a new TLC album since the posthumous record 3D.
 The collective identity of Nirvana was inseparable from the image of frontman Kurt Cobain (left). The band never performed again following Cobain’s 1994 suicide. |
 Metallica’s career stretched more than 20 years past the 1986 death of original bassist Cliff Burton; the band recorded its best-selling albums after Burton’s death, but still play material written with Burton. |
To make matters more complicated, this type of decision is played out before millions of album-gripping fans and, as a band that totaled a combined $80 million in ticket sales alone between 2006 and 2007, DMB presumably has quite the extended family. But there is a band whose recent loss parallels that of DMB. Only weeks before the sold-out Bruce Springsteen gig at John Paul Jones Arena, E Street Band member Danny Federici died following a bout with melanoma.
Like LeRoi, Federici was a founding member of the band, a modest performer whose subtle flourishes and live performances were consistent across years of albums and tours. And like Springsteen and the E Streeters, DMB makes its name on the reliably ecstatic live connection with its leagues of fans, and have thus far played on despite the loss of their respective longtime band members.
 Following his unceremonious ousting from the Rolling Stones, a band that he founded, Brian Jones (center) was found dead at the bottom of his swimming pool in England. |
All bands come to an end—yes, Keith Richards will die someday—but the Stones didn’t stop after Brian Jones, did they? For now, it’s reassuring to know that the family around LeRoi Moore was certainly as large and as close as it ever was when the original lineup of Dave Matthews Band was still intact.
 Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, pictured here during their gig at John Paul Jones Arena, lost a member only weeks before their Charlottesville gig when founding keyboardist Danny Federici died. |
 Although TLC released the album 3D following the death of singer Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes (center), the band had little luck, even with a reality TV casting call. |